124 DOGS. 



But climate cannot have effected much difference in the growth, 

 since the two extremes are found both in hot and cold countries. 

 Nor can food have had a material influence, since man, existing 

 entirely on vegetables or on fish, retains all his faculties as well 

 as when he subsists on flesh j and to a late period in the history 

 of Europe, the fiercest dogs, such as the packs kept by the 

 feudal nobility for boar and wolf hunting, were invariably fed on 

 bread. If the dog proceeded solely from one typical species, 

 allowance being made for some modifications as above specified, 

 all his developments would continue within the circle of powers 

 and faculties belonging to the original type. They might 

 diminish, but increase only in a trifling degree. We may infer, 

 that food or climate would not truncate and widen the muzzle, 

 nor raise the frontals, nor greatly alter the posterior branches of 

 the lower jaw-bone, as in mastiffs.* It would scarcely have the 

 effect, in other cases, of producing a high and slender structure, 

 while it took away the sense of smelling, and several of the best 

 moral qualifications resulting from domesticity and education, 

 as occurs in greyhounds. All these qualities appear to us indi- 

 cations of different types, whose combinable properties have 

 enabled man to multiply the species of dogs into the several 

 races his wants required. In these views we expect to have the 

 concurrence of all sportsmen, who have studied the characters of 

 the animals more than the books of systematic writers, and are 

 led by inferences from their own observations, rather than by 

 the authority of names. We know it to be the opinion of 

 foresters and huntsmen of the north and east of Europe, men 

 generally well educated, and who live wholly in the presence of 

 Nature. We are assured it is the doctrine of the Chinese and 

 Tartars, particularly in the notice on dogs in the treatise on 

 hunting, under the names of Id, 1st, and Kuschuk. We know 



* " The deep jaw-bones of some domestic dogs are independent of the 

 more general character of the family, and indicate a corresponding possession 

 of actual physical power, as in the lion and jagaur, compared with the more 

 insiduous habits of the puma, we find a similar correspondence." Captain 

 Brown's Translation of the Animal Kingdom (Edinburgh). 



